05 March 2014
Bilbao Campus
The ceremony will be held on 5 March at 7.30 pm at the Basque Society of Notaries offices. The book, which examines the evolution of Regional Civil Law in Alava, Biscay and Guipuzcoa from the end of the nineteenth century (1876) to end of the twentieth century (1992), will be presented to the public.
An expert on Civil Law, which he lectures on at the University of Deusto Law Faculty in Basque and Spanish, Urrutia was a member of the Advisory Council on the Basque Language from 1984 to 1988. He has also taken part in numerous lexographical and terminological works, further proof of his commitment to promoting the Basque language.
However, his latest publication examines another of his specialist fields, Regional Civil Law in the Basque Country. Together with the Economic Agreements, this is the last remaining contribution from what was the key period of Basque regional history, according to Urrutia.
Summary
The book: Código, Compilación y Fuero Civil. Elementos para una historia del Derecho civil foral vasco (1876-1992) “is based on the firm conviction that during large part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Basque regional law system was incorporated into the Spanish Civil Code. In its different forms, it developed from a series of formulations set down in texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to become codified texts in keeping with the legal canons at the end of the nineteenth century and middle of the twentieth century.
During this process, one of the most difficult periods was that following the loss of the Basque historical rights in 1876 when Basque Civil Regional Law, with its strong customary law component and notarial and forensic practices, was shaped to adhere to Spain's civil legislative unity" a key phrase which appears on the cover of Urrutia's book.
The book is therefore based on the difficulties surrounding Regional Civil Law in the Basque Country during the Spanish Restoration period and the loss of the Basque historical rights (fueros) in 1876. During this period, the publication of the Spanish Civil Code (1888-1889) meant that the existing territorial civil rights in Spain had to be compiled, formulated and updated as Appendices to the legal text.
This was the beginning of two lines of work that lasted until the Civil War in 1936. On the one hand, there was the legal-professional work that materialised as the 1900 Appendix and its later revision by the Bilbao Legal Society in 1928, a text which never went into effect. On the other hand, the line of work determined by the Basque Country’s political and autonomous claims, which always proclaimed Basque Civil Law as the region's own competence.
The two lines of work converged with the 1936 Basque Statute of Autonomy which acknowledges this competence although it was never used due to the short time it was in force (1936-1937).
The new legal system resulting from the Civil War approached the problem of the unifying Spain’s civil laws from another perspective which was closer to Spanish ideological unity and is clearly explained in this book.
Following the National Civil Law Congress held in Zaragoza in 1946, emphasis was placed on drafting compilations of territorial civil law, focusing on a sole Civil Code for Spain.
A complete explanation of the participation of jurists from Biscay, Alava and Guipuzcoa in this congress and the later role of legal experts from Biscay and Alava in drafting the Compilation of Historic Civil Law in Biscay and Alava ((1959) is given. Firstly, the author offers a historical overview in chronological order and goes on to discuss how this legal text evolved until it was replaced by Law 3/92, Regional Civil Law of the Basque Country, enacted by the Basque Parliament once the Basque Country's competences had been recovered with the Statute of Guernica (1979).
Nor does the author overlook an important counterpoint, the inclusion of initiatives from Basque nationalist exiles in its civil regional law, parallel to the contributions from the Basque Country.
A collection of legal documents on the subject is available in a separate CD attached to the back cover in addition to an album with photographs of key players in the process and the sources used to research Regional Civil Law in the Basque Country.
